Apparently due to long schools’ closure because of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country and the subsequent postponement on two occasions, of this year’s West African Senior School Certificate Examination (WASSCE) by the West African Examinations Council (WAEC), a huge total of 11,259 candidates among those who registered for the exam did not turn up to write their papers nationwide.
Also, more female students performed better in the examination than their male counterparts.
Head of National Office of WAEC in Nigeria, Mr Patrick Areghan, released the statistics of the exam while announcing the results at a media briefing in Lagos, on Monday.
According to him, a total of 1,594,740 candidates registered for the exam from 19, 129 government-registered schools nationwide, and only 1,538,445 candidates eventually sat the examination, indicating that 11,295 didn’t turn up across the country.
He also noted that out of 1, 003,668 (representing 65.24 per cent) of the total 1538,445 candidates who sat the exam and obtained credit and above in at least five subjects, including English language and mathematics, 497,139 (representing 49.53 per cent) were males while 506, 5299 (representing 50.47 per cent) were females.
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Tribune Online reports that the number of absentees in this year’s edition of the exam is the highest in recent history in Nigeria for students who had registered for the school-based exam without showing up to sit for it.
From WAEC’s statistics obtained by our correspondent, only 5, 988 from a total of 1,595,161 registered candidates for a similar exam didn’t turn up last year while that of 2018 was 6, 450 from 1,578, 846 registered candidates.
On gender performance of the same in 2019, 507,862 (representing 49.77 per cent) were males and 50.23 per cent females from a total of 1,590,173 who passed the exam while that of 2018 was 389,655 (47.32 per cent) males and 396,321 (representing 52.68 per cent) were females.
WAEC’s HNO in an exclusive interview with Tribune Online on Friday said even though he could not say specifically the reason for the huge absentees in the exam, it would not be far from the general lock-down that lasted many months and subsequent postponement of the exam because of the pandemic.
He, however, pointed out that all the absentees were fully registered and prepared for by the council for the exam but were absent throughout the period the exam lasted.
On gender performance, he said researches had shown that female students are naturally more serious with their studies than their male counterparts not only in Nigeria but globally, thus, their better performance.
He noted that while female students would be reading or studying their subjects, their male counterparts would be doing something else including looking for money even at their level.
In addition, he noted that more attention is usually given to girl-child even by government and relevant agencies locally and internationally than their male peer in education.
“That is where you hear girl-child education without anybody talking about boy-child education,” he said.
and then